


go anywhere blindly

by boneoft (dovelines)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Flash Fic, M/M, the tfa bar scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 01:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18084425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovelines/pseuds/boneoft
Summary: Peggy — she probably meant it as a good thing, telling Bucky how brave Steve had been as a little guy in with a lot of big fish. As if Bucky didn’t damn well know.





	go anywhere blindly

**Author's Note:**

> can’t believe this is my first contribution to ca ficdom . honestly I’m so sorry this is nonsense but it’s 1:30 am
> 
> no beta and very little proofing at all actually if there are any glaring mistakes PLEASE let me know !!!!
> 
> (title from [the new jobro song](https://youtu.be/CnAmeh0-E-U))

Peggy — she probably meant it as a good thing, telling Bucky how brave Steve had been as a little guy in with a lot of big fish. As if Bucky didn’t damn well know.

“Colonel Phillips finally agreed, you know, after that test with the dummy grenade,” was how she started it. Steve pushes his beer around on the table, shifting it between his hands and getting condensation on his cuffs. Bucky’s fingers around his own beer are — nice, really, look pretty and warm, and the adrenaline from Azzano is starting to wear off. Steve’s got his own room, a real mattress. It would be nice to — hold Bucky. Kiss the scrapped-raw places on his face, feel the warmth of the skin of his chest.

“How does a dummy grenade prove anything?” Bucky is saying when Steve comes back to the conversation. He’s got that little twist to his mouth that sets something hot in Steve’s belly, even though there’s a strange, close distance in the way he holds himself. He keeps touching Steve’s wrists, back, shoulders, like Steve might disappear if Bucky doesn’t get a hand on him.

“We didn’t know it was a dummy, obviously,” Peggy says. A flicker of alarm bursts into Steve’s chest, but he can’t get his mouth open fast enough to keep her from saying: “He jumped on it anyway.”

The bar doesn’t go silent. There’s too many soldiers all celebrating, half of them already sloshed, for it to be any kind of quiet, not even if Steve’s ears have abruptly forgotten that they’re fixed.

Steve’s jaw closes with a small click. He can  _ feel  _ himself going red, heat creeping up his collar to his ears; very abruptly, the bubbles in his beer are the most interesting bubbles he’s ever seen.

“Did he,” Bucky says, very slowly. His gaze on Steve is hard enough that it feels like a physical presence, boring through him like it’ll let Bucky tear out the part of Steve that never learns. Peggy makes a curious little noise just audible over a swell of noise from the Howlies — Steve can’t look at her, either.

He lips his lips. Swallows. Takes a deep breath and says, “Buck—” before Bucky cuts him off.

“Real cute, Rogers,” he says. He leans back in his chair and angles his chin and Steve, Steve isn’t looking at him and he already feels— “You wanted to die for your damn country so badly that you took the first opportunity you saw?”

“That ain’t how it went, Buck,” Steve tries, pushing steel into his voice. “You  _ know _ — it’s a  _ grenade, _ someone’s—”

“Someone’s guts gotta get blown to bits, and that someone’s gotta be you, huh?”

It catches Steve off guard, how angry Bucky is. Peggy might not be able to tell, but it reads clearly to Steve: the muscle jumping along Bucky’s jaw, the stiff set of his brow, his mouth. Bucky’s tongue runs over his top teeth, under his lip, and the yellow wall lamps of the bar cast interesting shadows on the firm planes of his face. 

“It was still a dummy,” he says quietly.

“And you’re still a fucking martyr!”

Bucky says it loud enough that the bar does go quiet, this time. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Morita frown and start to get to his feet; Gabe puts a hand on his shoulder.

Peggy presses her lips together and gives Steve some kind of look, some kind of meaning that he’s not equipped to understand. When she rises, smooth and red and graceful, the bar sets up murmuring again. Some of the boys resume their game of darts, Dugan calls loudly for another round; Peggy sways away and out as if she’d known what she was doing the whole time, and Bucky doesn’t stop glowering. He’s glowering at his beer now, though, instead of Steve, so it feels like some of the air has come back into the room. Some of the tight metal bands gone from around his chest.

Steve doesn’t — he didn’t — 

“Buck,” he says, quietly. For a second he thinks he said it too quietly, that it’s too low for non-serumed ears to pick up amid the rumbling hubbub around them, but then Bucky’s hand tightens on his glass hard enough that his knuckles go white.

“Did you even think,” Bucky says. Every word is enunciated very clearly, not a trace of alcohol. “Did you even fucking  _ think.” _ He stops there, the phrase complete and unfinished. He doesn’t say: I can’t lose you, Stevie, not you, not yet.

“I didn’t,” Steve answers, helplessly, once the silence has stretched long enough between them. He doesn’t say: my last thought was gonna be loving you.

Bucky takes a long, slow pull from his beer. It’s dark and hoppy and exactly the kind Bucky hates, but he swallows it down like it’s a mouthful of Mama Gordon’s best whiskey. Steve has to clench his hands in the fabric of his pants not to reach out for him across the table. Apologies sit heavy in his mouth, but he doesn’t let them out. Not when he doesn’t mean them the way Bucky wants to hear them.

“If you,” Bucky starts, then takes another drink like he needs to settle his nerves. “If you ever do that again. I don’t care if it’s a dummy. If you  _ ever—” _ Another pause. Bucky has never had trouble putting his thoughts to words before, and the thought that either Steve or Azzano made him– but he’s speaking again. “I don’t give a shit about your damn complex, Rogers. You ain’t allowed to die, not while I’m still breathin’. Don’t you ever fucking try it.”

And Steve lets out a little sound halfway between happy and a sob and can’t stop himself from at least touching Bucky’s hand. The touch is nothing but fingertips to the tendon on top of his wrist, for a second, no more. “I won’t, Buck,” he says. He doesn’t even care that it ain’t a promise he can keep, not with the war on. Some of the tension bleeds out of Bucky’s mouth even though he must know Steve’s blowing hot air the same as Steve knows it. “You ain’t gettin’ rid of me, Buck, not for a while yet.”

“Good,” Bucky says. He finishes his beer easily and slams the empty glass back on the wood.

**Author's Note:**

> twt: [@stevcrgrs](https://www.twitter.com/stevcrgrs)


End file.
